Mentors Magazine: Issue 3

70 | MENTORS MAGAZINE | EDITION 3

‘Failure’ is never final

“I get knocked down, but I get up again,”
sang Chumbawamba, and that’s true for
bootstrappers as well. There are ways to
know if your venture is headed for failure
and when, why and how to bail out. For ex-
ample, if you develop a product and find
you don’t have the time or resources to
compete with the best in that category,
you’re wasting your time. This situation
materialized for a friend of mine who de-
veloped an online math teaching website
for students, which I developed into an
app. But we could not compete against
Khan Academy, which has become the be-
hemoth in this area.

The right option was to walk away, so we
did. It’s crucial to try to analyze which
dominos will doom your business and to
determine how you will react if those dom-
inos do, in fact, fall. Afterward, do a post-
mortem of your failure—determine what
you did wrong and what actions you will
take in the future to prevent a similar situa-
tion from reoccurring.

Get a mentor

A mentor can teach you important entre-
preneurial lessons. Don’t let youthful pride
stand in the way of finding one. Many suc-
cessful people care about changing the
world; they will give back if they see some-
thing in you. The main function of a men-
tor is to give insightful feedback in a way

that encourages independent thought in

the mentee. Ideally, they offer new ways to

look at

and analyze a problem and show you that

the approaches you are taking or plan to

take are not all the possible approaches.

A good mentor will also tell you what won’t

work in a way that allows you to identify

these issues for yourself when they arise

again in the future. One of the best men-

tors I ever had made me and a partner

map out every conceivable scenario at an

upcoming business meeting with a com-

puter manufacturer—and this preparation

helped us close a contract worth $150,000

in today’s dollars. Getting mentored pays

off handsomely.

Hire staff wisely

It’s crucial to know every aspect of your

business—but that doesn’t mean you have

to do it all yourself. Look for people with

something to prove; the best hire is some-

one who has made a personal commitment

to themselves to succeed. Onboarding the

right team members and letting them

know exactly what you need from them (by

establishing key performance indicators) is

crucial to your company’s success. If you

master this skill-set, your project’s growth

has the potential to be exponential.

Conversely, if you hire the wrong fit for

your needs, the amount of time and mon-

ey you might waste will be huge. My core